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JAY — A practical Vermont farmer will look at a big, old barn and calculate how many animals or hay bales it can shelter.

But there’s an increasing awareness among farmers and other Vermonters that those barns represent a far greater value.

Beyond their practical uses, they are an icon of the working landscape Vermonters treasure and tourists travel to see, a symbol not only of the state’s deep agricultural heritage but also of future opportunities.

At a daylong Northeast Kingdom farm and food summit held last month at Jay Peak Resort, about 190 attendees gathered to celebrate what State Sen. Vince Illuzzi in his opening remarks called “a renaissance in agriculture.”

Illuzzi, who has represented the Essex-Orleans district for more than 30 years, told the audience that the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs, which he chairs, historically had not been much involved in agriculture-related issues.

Four or five years ago, Illuzzi continued, that attitude changed, and the business of agriculture earned more focus within the state’s broad economic development efforts.

“We concluded,” he said, “that agriculture is as important to economic development as is IBM in Essex or GE in Rutland, and you can name other big employers in different parts of the state.”

Following Illuzzi to the podium, Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Chuck Ross echoed those words and built on them.

“Agriculture is important from an economic standpoint. It’s important, as we know, from a community standpoint,” Ross said. “I believe that agriculture and our friends in the forest-products industry really hold the soul of the state of Vermont.”

An engine with soul

To be both the soul and an economic engine for modern-day Vermont is a large assignment, but based on the diversity of businesses, programs and people represented at the mid-April summit, the agricultural community and its supporters appear up to the task.

Underscoring the importance of a vibrant agricultural landscape to the region’s tourism business, the Northeast Kingdom Travel and Tourism Association was the lead organizer of the summit.

“We want to promote tourism to support our working landscape,” said Gloria Bruce, the association’s executive director. “It’s about giving travelers a really unique taste of Vermont and keeping local farms viable. Working together, we can protect and preserve the landscape.”

The association coordinated the event in partnership with the Hardwick-based nonprofit Center for an Agricultural Economy and the support of a long list of regional and statewide organizations. The summit received funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural and Community Development Offices, enabling attendance by suggested donation.

Bruce said statewide events sometimes are inaccessible to Northeast Kingdom residents. “The goal is to bring people here and share resources within the Kingdom,” she said.

Entrepreneurial spirit

Chatting before his official introductory remarks, Ross said, “The activity in this region represents the movement that we’re seeing throughout Vermont, that people are engaging in agriculture and the food system in a very deep way.

“We’re building a food system for the 21st century,” he continued, “and it’s going to need to be diverse and community-based, one that’s grounded in knowing each other, in providing for each other and in sharing our stories and our practices with one another.

“Community-based agriculture is one of the things Vermont does very well,” Ross added. “We’re recognized nationally for the work that’s being done here. Each region of the state has its own success stories, its own strengths, all reflective of the entrepreneurial spirit of Vermonters.”

Over the course of the day, farmers and chefs, policymakers and nonprofit employees, entrepreneurs and marketers, homesteaders and gardeners all learned about solutions, resources and models that support, grow and capitalize on local agriculture.

Some reached statewide and beyond, such as presentations about food-safety regulations and best practices for farmers markets from the University of Vermont Extension, or the new DigInVermont.com tourism marketing tool about to be launched by the Vermont Agriculture and Culinary Tourism Council.

Others narrowed in on the “hyperlocal” — as stated in the title of a workshop on building neighborhood communities through gardening — and highlighted specific needs and opportunities within the Northeast Kingdom.

There were workshops by homesteaders growing food mostly for themselves, by small farmers focused on feeding their neighbors, and by the team at the Vermont Food Venture Center in Hardwick explaining how farmers and food producers from various parts of Vermont and even neighboring states can participate in their shared-use kitchen incubator to process products for consumption right in town or across the country.

The range of those using the recently opened 15,000-square-foot food processing facility represents the breadth of food businesses in the region. They include the anchor tenant, established world-class cheesemaker Cellars at Jasper Hill, which needed to expand cheesemaking space beyond its Greensboro headquarters, alongside start-ups including Janice Blair’s Vermont Kale Chips, which were made with a dehydrator in her Johnson kitchen until sales growth justified the move.

Goal of community

As Ross had noted, the theme of community ran through the day.

“We had a few goals when we started farming, and one of them was community,” said farmer Tamara Martin in her workshop on diversified agriculture at Chandler Pond Farm in South Wheelock. “We want people to come to the farm, to know where their food comes from.”

Martin, 30, and her husband, Rob, are in their fifth season of growing vegetables and also have gradually built up to an integrated system of meat and laying chickens, seasonal turkeys, pigs and a slowly growing herd of Devons for meat and raw milk sold from the farm.

Rob grew up on a traditional dairy in Bradford.

“He loved farming, but had seen the struggles. He didn’t want to ship milk,” his wife said.

The Martins offer 40 community-supported-agriculture (CSA) shares and sell at two farmers markets and through their own farm stand. A sugaring operation, pick-your-own strawberries and events such as a harvest festival, community garlic planting and fundraising feast in a field also bring people to the farm.

An audience member asked about genetically modified organisms, and Martin responded that the couple struggle with this issue in the face of skyrocketing organic feed prices. They have compromised by offering both conventional and organic meat birds.

Over a lunch containing a number of regionally grown ingredients, Anemone Fresh, gardener at Karme Choling, a Shambhala meditation retreat center and community in Barnet, said, “I came because I was inspired to see what others are doing, and I’m realizing what a resource this community is. Connecting with other farmers and growers is really important.”

Community ownership

Later in the day, Jennifer Black and Khristopher Flack shared a city view on community through Fresh Start Community Farm in Newport, a bootstrap downtown gardening project they launched last year with funding from a municipal planning grant.

“The whole point was building a neighborhood. The garden was the tool,” Black said. She and Flack worked to engage neighbors of an empty city lot in the creation of a vibrant community garden where they also offered classes in freezing corn, preparing salsa and strawberry jam and making compost.

“The great stuff going on in Vermont isn’t always trickling down to every little community,” Flack cautioned. “We need to recognize a baseline of food access for every community.”

Their project had its nay-sayers, but Black and Flack forged on, buoyed by the support of the neighborhood.

“You can’t pull the dreams out of your head if you don’t let them in,” Flack said.

This year, the pair will be managing the original garden plus an existing park site and breaking ground on a third garden on the front lawn of a new business in town, Numia Medical, in exchange for offering a work-based CSA to their employees.

They are working hard to raise money for ongoing support of the project within the city rather than looking for outside funding. “We’re working to feed Newport. The goal is to raise the money in Newport,” Flack said. “Each garden belongs to the community it is in.”

Community-based solutions

Another Newport-based effort was one of several marketing and tourism projects represented on the workshop agenda.

Patricia Sears, executive director of the nonprofit Newport City Renaissance Corporation — flanked by Steve Breault, co-owner of Newport Natural Food Market and Cafe, and Chris Venegas of Green Mountain Farm Direct —explained the Newport Fresh by Nature program developed to help local restaurants connect with regional food producers and then publicize those efforts.

Although the goals of the program sound similar to those of the statewide Vermont Fresh Network organization, Sears noted, “We are working with them, plugging into them, but we’re much more community-based. We’re filling the gaps at a community level.”

Venegas, a regionally focused food distributor, and Breault of the Newport Natural Market both noted the extra challenges of Newport’s far northern location for restaurants trying to connect with local growers who are a good match in terms of scale. “These statewide initiatives really need these on-the-ground regional projects,” an audience member agreed.

Feeding neighbors

The challenges facing small food producers also were addressed in a number of workshops, most of which raised issues shared across the state.

In a workshop about how food hubs can help more efficiently aggregate and distribute locally produced food, participants role-played. One group represented a farmer trying to sell products to a local school, while the other group represented the school. Issues of food safety and the ability of the school to store, process and afford local ingredients were raised.

A spirited discussion about opportunities and challenges for Vermont meat farmers took place around a wide circle of chairs filled with producers, distributors, representatives from the Agency of Agriculture and the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont (NOFA-VT) and others. The conversation included points about processing bottlenecks, on-farm slaughter and the need to educate consumers about the differences between grain- and grass-fed meat.

Mark Brouillette, 45, of Breezy Acres Farm in Montgomery participated in both of these workshops. He and his wife, Wendy, who was also at the summit, sold their registered Jersey in 2007, giving up the dairy that had been in the family since Mark’s great-grandfather’s day.

Since then, Mark has been working full-time as a wastewater operator, but he thinks it’s time to get back into farming raising vegetables and beef.

“Once a farmer, always a farmer,” Wendy said, smiling.

The couple saw the summit listed on the NOFA-VT website. “This is helping us make the connections locally,” Mark said. “I feel like we’re almost ready to take the plunge.”

It’s good timing, the Brouillettes agreed.

“Everybody wants to know where their food is coming from,” Wendy said.